like how superheroes need their capes
by with the monsters
Summary: -and that's when she abandons her mask and flees into the night, leaving James holding empty air and an imaginary superhero cape..- LilyTeddy, with some LucyLorcan.


like how superheroes need their capes  
_the greatest pretenders pretend not for power or money but for love. so pretend, little china doll.  
~_(For **Aiiimy**, because she wrote me a happy ending.)

---

She pretends like there is no tomorrow. That's all she's done, all her life. Pretending not to care, pretending to be _happy _for him, _happy for them_, pretending like she doesn't hate Victoire because, come on, who could _hate Victoire? _She's beautiful and she's elegant and she's great with children and she _has him. (_And it just _isn't_ fair._)_

Lily is a pretender, and she is better by far than any that have gone before. Pretenders to the throne, pretenders to power, pretenders to riches – they've got nothing on her, prettypretty girl that she is.

She grew up all of a sudden. Not, like, _over the summer_ growing up, but in one single instant. That instant when Victoire stood up and put her hand on Teddy's shoulder and she said _we're getting married _and Teddy's eyes widened, looking straight at _(_his_)_ Lily – and like the perfect little pretender she is she had plastered a pre-manufactured smile across her face and she hadn't cried until late that night when she crawled down to the bottom of their huge garden and buried her face in the long grass and earthy scent and _howled _like a dog.

And the next morning, _bam_, she was grown up. Fifteen years old and no more whining, no more tantrums, no more childish laughter and staying up with _him _until one in the morning. No more waiting at the window for his visits, no more demanding him to stay over.

Now he comes and she locks herself in her bedroom until she is ready, because her costume is a part of who she is. Like a superhero who is nothing without his mask or his cape, so Lily Potter is nothing without her short skirts and deadly-straight hair and killer high heels. And she descends and he frowns and she knows, _she knows, _that she is hurting him and it feels _fantastic._

_(_If she's hurting, she doesn't see what right he has not to be._)_

And he corners her on the upstairs landing and she glares at him, still only reaching up to his nose even her heels, and she crosses her arms and pouts.

"What do you want, Teddy?"

He rests his forehead against hers and takes a deep breath and then he says: "Why are you doing this to yourself?"

And for one single second the cape slips from her shoulders and she pushes the mask away and she meets his roiling eyes with her own icy green ones and she replies, "don't you know?"

And then she ducks under his arm as she pulls her costume back into place and she doesn't look back. The prettiest pretenders never do.

"Please, Lily," he says very quietly, and she turns around and shifts her weight to one hip.

"Please what, Teddy? Please don't go? Please keep loving me even though I'm marrying someone else? Please don't stop, I need your adoration to keep me feeling good about myself?"

"No," he says desperately, and she is suddenly screaming without meaning to be.

"Then _what_?!" she shrieks, magic building inside her and she can _feel it _preparing to explode but there is _nothing _she can do because he is standing there and his eyes are wide because she has been so calm, so quiet, so collected for so long and he has entirely forgotten that she is capable of this. "_Why_ do you keep _doing _this, Teddy?!"

Al and James run up the stairs to see what all the fuss is about and they encounter their sister staring their godbrother down over the length of the carpeted hallway.

"Because," he says, swallowing, and tries again. "Because I think I lo-"

"_Don't you dare_," she hisses, and Al and James watch unobserved as Lily's fists clench into knuckles, faces pale and confused and _ohso_scared. "Don't you _dare _try that. Isn't it enough that you're marrying Vic? Do you _have _to tear me down and rub it in and give me hope only to pull me apart later?"

"Please, Lily," Teddy repeats frantically, and that is when the magic bursts out of her and she screams and screams as the mirror shatters and all the doors in house crash open and Teddy is thrown against the wall, all his agonised air rushing out of him.

Harry sprints up the stairs and he finds his sons clutching onto the banister looking terrified for their lives and his daughter, his pretty pretending daughter, she is standing in the wreckage of her life and the stars that used to be fixed in her eyes are running down her sharp cheeks like rain and she turns, her hair wild, and she collapses into his arms and she sobs like she has been broken apart.

"I don't know what you did," Harry warns Teddy as he kneels in the broken glass, clutching Lily like she will disappear if he lets her go, "but I suggest you leave now."

Teddy walks away silently as Harry gently lifts Lily into his arms and carries her into her bedroom, shutting the door behind him and letting Al and James' white faces disappear.

"Tell me, sweetheart," he says gently, stroking her hair as he tucks the white blanket around her, wiping her ruined stars off her face with a thumb. "Tell me what he did."

"He's marrying Victoire," she says in a muffled tone, beyond caring that she never wanted her father to find out. "He's marrying her but he keeps pretending like I mean something important to him and I'm scared because I'm stupid enough to believe it."

"Oh, baby," Ginny says from the doorway, and pushes into the room, gathering Lily up into her lap. Al and James climb onto the bed and awkwardly pat their sister, needing her to know they are here – they will always be here.

"It always hurts the first time, love," Ginny promises. "The first is always the hardest."

"Yeah – remember after Al broke up with Ally?" James asks with a poor attempt at humour. "The poor little kid cried for _days._ And he was sixteen."

Lily huffs out a slight laugh through her tears and Harry presses a kiss to her forehead.

"It'll be okay, my little china doll," he promises, and she smiles sadly at the return of his old nickname for her from _the before. _The before where she was happy and innocent and it was all about who could run the fastest and bounce the highest and not who got the boy and the grades and the popularity.

"I'm going to sleep now," she says, still pretending just a little, and her family envelopes her in a giant hug, ruffling her hair and murmuring _I love you_s and then they are gone, and she is alone with the silence of her heart and the agonised pull of air into and out of her heaving lungs.

And she pulls her cape over her face and cries herself to sleep.

:…**&**…:

Her sixteenth birthday rolls around and she is an August baby so her parents offer to organise a huge birthday party for her in the garden of the Burrow and she reaches up to check her mask is still in place and then she nods and smiles and explodes with pretend excitement as her mother and grandmother and aunts all gather round and plan her birthday party.

She's the youngest Weasley and this is the last sixteenth birthday party they'll be throwing until a fourth generation appears and they're going to make it count.

Lily hates to rain on their parade so she adjusts her tight-red-pants-that-you-wear-on-the-outside and checks the fastening on her cape and saves the rain for late at night because she's not like a film and she can't cry prettily, and pretty is kind of all she's got these days.

"Are you excited?" Lucy asks from where she is leaning on the edge of Lily's bed, watching her cousins. Lily, wincing as Dominique stabs a hairpin rather carelessly into her skull, smiles her practised smile and her eyes flash disarmingly at Lucy in the mirror.

"Of course," she gushes, the emptiness inside clawing at her throat. "Why should I not be?"

"I heard your father banned Teddy from coming," Roxanne says from where she is picking out eyeshadows. "No-one knows why."

Lily ignores the rising tide of hysteria that threatens and blinks a couple of times – and it is right then that Lucy notices the stars are missing from her young cousin's eyes.

"It's nothing," Lily promises, and Lucy narrows her blue eyes and watches as Lily gracefully relaxes her face to allow Roxanne to apply the make-up.

Lucy waits for a few moments as Dom and Roxie fuss over Lily and then she slips out, bursting into Al's room.

"Malfoy, out," she orders, ignoring Scorpius' protests and bearing down on Al. "You," she says threateningly as soon as Scorpius is gone, "tell me what is up with your sister."

"What do you mean?" Al replies, unconvincingly nonchalant. "There's nothing wrong with her."

"You were always the worst liar out of all of us, Al," she tells him firmly, and he sighs.

"It's Teddy. They had a huge fight and Dad banned him from seeing her."

"Your _dad _banned him?" Lucy asks, flopping down onto Albus' bed with surprise. "But he _adores _Teddy."

"He adores Lily more," Al points out, sitting down next to her. "And he just can't bear to see her get hurt."

Lucy swiftly puts two-and-two together and scowls. "What is _wrong _with that man?" she asks furiously. "Who in their right minds would pick Vic over Lily?"

"I asked him that," Al admits very quietly, fiddling with his fingers. "I apparated over to his flat and he was just _in there. _He wasn't watching TV or drinking or anything. He was just sitting in the middle of the floor, staring off into space. So I asked him. And he said she was too young and Victoire was the safer option and my dad would kill him."

Lucy shakes her head in disgust. "_Men_," she huffs, her eyes clouded at the thought of Lily going through this. "You lot are so _stupid_."

"Well, it's alright for you," Al points out, finally lying back next to her. "You've got Lorcan who, from what I hear, is the absolute epitome of perfect manliness."

Lucy half-smiles and then her eyes focus and she turns to face Al. "We tried to set Lily up with Lysander for a while. But it was always Teddy. Always."

And then the door crashes open and Roxanne bursts in, grabbing Lucy and Al's hands. "C'mon," she crows, laughing wildly, "we finished!"

The end result is fabulous and Lily, looking at her face in the mirror, pulls away her mask just for a second to take a look underneath.

"You guys did a great job," she tells them with astonishingly sincere delight that Al sees right through.

"You look fantastic, Lils," he says, reaching over to hug her. "My little sister, all grown up!"

She grins and ducks out of his overwhelming hug and then takes a deep breath and lifts her chin up.

"Okay," she says, and Lucy senses her pulling all her bulletproof costume into place. "Let's do this."

:…**&**…:

The rabble in the garden _ooh_ and _aah_ as she appears, then break out into a spontaneous rendition of Happy Birthday, perfectly out of tune, and she giggles as her father places a little birthday tiara on her carefully-arranged hair and kisses her cheek.

"Happy sixteenth birthday!" he yells over the noise, and the crowd explodes with delight. Lily, aching inside because only Teddy ever understood how much she hates parties, smiles and accepts James' invitation to dance and as her brother spins her round under the prettysparkly lights she blinks the tears away.

"You need to go down to the bottom of the garden after the third song," James whispers in her ear as the chorus of the song thrums out into the night air. "Don't argue," he warns as she looks set to protest. "Just do it."

She sighs and nods and James looks a little something like heartbroken.

"Merlin, Lily," he says, and Lily frowns up at him in confusion because James is never serious like this.

"What?" she says, and with a something a little like a sob James pulls her tightly into a hug, burying his face in her hair.

"You're my baby sister, Lils," he tells her, "and it kills me to see you like this."

And that's when she abandons her mask and flees into the night, leaving James holding empty air and an imaginary superhero cape.

:…**&**…:

She collapses at the bottom of the garden, costume in disarray, tears pouring down like rain, and she howls into the grass. Looking down to where the small stream feeds into a neighbouring lake she heaves out a sob and steps out of her shoes, breaking the straps, and sprints towards the dark water.

She can hear shouts behind her and see lit wands spreading out through the darkness so she vaults the fence that runs around their garden and abandons her birthday tiara at the edge of the water. And then she plunges into the darkness and everything is senseless and she thinks that maybe she could live with staying down here forever.

She casts a bubblehead charm and lets herself sink to the bottom of the lake, silver dress swirling around her like a fairytale, her hair coming loose and eddying about her face, a splash of colour against the murkiness. Fish dart past her, confused by this intruder in their midst with her fire hair and prettypretty dress and she smiles because down here tears are invisible.

She stretches back until she is lying staring at the faint silver skin on the surface of the water, moonlight filtering through, and for a time her thoughts almost entirely cease until it is just her and the water and the moonlight and she wishes she had found this place earlier.

Time stops for her down there. She has lost her mask and cape but it's okay because the water is weaving a suit of invisibility for her and she doesn't need to worry anyway because there is nobody here to pretend to.

And then minutes, hours, days later the beautiful silver skin is ruptured and somebody plunges into the water, swimming down towards her with powerful strokes.

She sees his blue hair and his brown eyes and his broad shoulders and her wand jumps into her hand. She shakes her head slowly as he draws to a halt in front of her, his hands churning up the water, and she just looks at him as his eyes plead with her.

Words rush out of his mouth in a spill of bubbles and she is delighted because now he cannot speak to her, cannot hurt her anymore. She shuts her eyes and turns away lest she reads his lips unintentionally and then suddenly strong arms are around her waist and she is exploding towards the surface, screaming and fighting until they burst from the surface.

"No," she shrieks, clawing at his face as he kicks backwards towards the shore because she is missing her mask and she cannot, _will not_, be near him without it.

"What, you're going to stay down there forever?" he challenges, heaving her up onto the shore, breathing heavily.

"What, because being up here is so much _better_?" she retorts furiously, dragging herself away from him, shivering in the cool night air. "Because up here I'm not going to get hurt?"

He looks like he is fighting some internal battle and she thinks _good _and she hopes he loses, hopes he loses _everything._

"I got you a birthday present," he says finally, and lifts a carefully wrapped box off the grass and hands it over to her. "I hope you like it."

And suddenly, somehow, as their hands touch over the little present, his mouth is rushing towards hers and she is moaning against his lips, and she should maybe be thinking of how he is just going to hurt her again and her father will be angry and he's too old but instead she is thinking of nothing, nothing at all.

"I have to sort some things out," he breathes against her mouth when they finally part, and she falls backwards slightly as he rises to his feet abruptly and jogs off into the darkness.

When her family find her she is surrounded by torn pieces of wrapping paper and she is sobbing over a delicate, silver-and-green Venetian mask and a note that reads, _because it will be easier if I know when you're pretending._

:…**&**…:

She hears nothing from him for days and eventually it is time for the return to school. She is so confused and upset that she refuses to read his letters, just scribbles out her name on the front and replaces it with his and carries the owl she got him for his eighteenth birthday over to the window and throws it back out.

At Christmas she refuses to return home and Hugo looks at her worriedly but instead she goes to Romania to chase the dragons with Charlie and at night she pulls out the Venetian mask and presses her face into it and cries.

The thrill of the dragons has been branded into her soul by the time she returns home and Lucy is relieved to discover that Lily's stars have returned and she holds her cousin tight and tells her the very secret news that she and Lorcan are expecting a baby and Lily screams with joy and hugs her cousin all the tighter and Lucy thinks that maybe, just maybe, Lily is back on track.

Then comes the news that Victoire and Teddy have very suddenly broken off their engagement and the latter has left to take a job in America. Lucy distracts Lily by insisting she helps with her and Lorcan's wedding preparations, forcing her young cousin into hundreds of bridesmaid dresses and laughing at each gradually more disgusted face Lily pulls.

"I sure hope you're not planning to wear white," Lily grins at her one afternoon as Lucy lounges on a sofa in a wedding shop, her shirt riding up over her five-month pregnant belly. Lucy laughs and struggles to her feet to pull Lily's dress in at the back.

"Have you lost weight?" she asks critically as Lily absently fiddles with the folds of the dress.

"Maybe," Lily shrugs. "I don't know, I haven't really been keeping track of what I eat."

"Don't destroy yourself for him, Lils," Lucy warns gently. "He's not worth it. Some day you'll meet a boy and he'll want you just for you without anything else to worry about."

"Like Lysander, you mean?" Lily teases, green eyes sparkling because she is _ohso_practised at this pretending lark now it's like she doesn't even have to try.

"Just like Lysander, in fact," Lucy retorts, elbowing her in the side, and then she pulls out a different dress in a pretty silvery white and thrusts it at her. "Go and try this one on."

Lily finally emerges and Lucy is dumbstruck by the beauty of the dress and the little china doll her cousin has become and her red hair against the shimmer of the bodice.

"That's the one," she says, and Lily beams.

"It'll look great on Dom and Molly and Roxie, too," she says happily, doing a little pirouette, and then her expression darkens abruptly. "You know," she says, her eyes a mile away, "I have a mask that would look just perfect with this."

Lucy's mind suddenly races with possibilities and she grins.

"That's it! Masks. You'll all be in masks."

"So you can steal the limelight, you mean?" Lily asks mischievously, her sparkle back, and Lucy elbows her again.

:…**&**…:

The wedding day rolls around a couple of months after the birth of the twins Amy and Ela and Lucy is looking tired but radiant in her long white dress as she processes up the aisle.

However, it is undoubtedly the bridesmaids who steal the show in their identical dresses with their red hair bound up into delicate curls and different coloured masks hiding the top half of their faces and matching their flowers and they are so beautiful and mysterious that Lucy gets many, many congratulations for the idea afterwards.

In the audience, James and Al try to pick Lily out. They work out it must be Dominique with the blue-and-silver because she's wearing combat boots under her dress and Roxanne with the silver-and-grey because she keeps darting gazes at where the Malfoys are sitting and James and Al have always suspected maybe she harbours a secret crush on Scorpius, ignoring Lily's suggestions that it is Scorpius' well-dressed father who has claimed their cousin's heart. Then they suppose Molly must be with the silver-and-gold because she is a Gryffindor through-and-through and the red of her hair with the gold swirls in her mask mean she is being very loyal to her old school house.

Which leaves Lily in the green-and-silver and really they shouldn't be surprised because she has always been proud of being in Slytherin and besides the green matches her eyes.

They don't notice the tall man sitting in the back whose whole attention is focused solely on the girl in the green and silver mask, even through the vows when little Ela starts crying and her great-grandmother Molly bounces her on her old, arthritic knee and Lucy and Lorcan laugh before exchanging "I do"s and the crowd gulp back tears of joy and raise the roof.

And all the while he is watching Lily, and only her. Her cape is back in place, he notices as she smiles widely at Lucy when her cousin half-turns for reassurance, the fakeness of it glaringly obvious to him but apparently him only.

After the dinner and the speeches and the laughter he traps her in the plushly-carpeted corridor leading outside.

"You're wearing the mask," he says, reaching out to trace the edges, and her big green eyes stare up at him emotionlessly.

"What do you want, Teddy? Come to screw around with my heart a little more? You're right, I don't think it's mangled enough yet."

"I'm sorry, Lils," he says, and she sighs.

"You're always sorry. What in particular are you sorry for, Ted? Wasting my time? Breaking my heart? Raising my hopes and crushing them again? Leaving for America? Never coming to see me?"

"Jesus, have you been writing _everything_ down?" he asks in surprise, and he sees the corners of her mouth twitching despite her pretending her very hardest.

"Can you just hurry up with it already?" she asks with practised disinterest, glancing at the watch she doesn't wear. "I promised Lucy I'd dance with Lysander."

"I love you, Lily," he says firmly, the bluntness of it surprising her. "I want to marry you and live with you forever."

"No you don't," she says softly, her eyes downcast. "You think you do now but by tomorrow you'll have changed your mind again."

"Not this time," he promises, gently reaching round to untie the ribbon holding her mask up. "This time I mean it."

The mask slips away and falls down the ground, landing on the carpet with a noiseless finality as above it their bodies crash together like hurricane-driven waves and they kiss like a power ballad.

:…**&**…:

They re-enter the room together, hand-in-hand, and Lucy and Dominique crow with joy as he sweeps her onto the dancefloor, the perfect counterpart to her superhero china doll. Harry sighs and turns to Ginny as his wife smiles.

"It'll all be okay from now on," Ginny says, reaching over to squeeze her husband's hand. "Don't you want her to be happy?"

"I don't trust him not to hurt her again," Harry admits, returning the pressure, and Ginny chuckles and threads a hand through his hair, gently turning his head so he can watch the two of them laugh together.

"This happened because he didn't want to hurt her," she tells him firmly. "You know Teddy. He just didn't want to hurt Victoire either and he backed himself into a corner."

"He's too old," Harry grumbles, and Ginny laughs and mock-slaps him.

"No-one will ever be good enough for her, will they?"

"She's my only daughter," Harry protests. "Of course no-one ever will be."

Ginny smirks and pulls him to his feet, leading him out onto the dancefloor, her head resting on his shoulder as they nestle together as perfectly as they have since they were seventeen.

On the opposite side of the room, Roxanne elegantly accepts a dance from Draco Malfoy, ignoring the odd looks she is shot from her twin brother and cousins. Molly twirls in Lysander's strong arms and Lucy presses herself against Lorcan blissfully.

But the two most radiant dancers are the two in the centre of the dancefloor, meshed together like wind and rain, not pretending any more.

---

**A/N: **Ela, Amy, thanks for letting me borrow your names and I hope you enjoyed being the kids of Lucy and Lorcan for the length of this piece!

To everyone else, I recommend you read still we are navigating by the stars so you aren't weirded out by Roxanne and Draco. It may make more sense then.

Please don't favourite without leaving a review!


End file.
